This is a spoiler-free review!
When I picked this book of my shelf, imagine my surprise to see that I had already started reading it, and had a book mark about one third of the way through. Just to jog my memory, I read the summary on the back of the book and realized that the title is a combination of Grace and Jared's last names. Which then of course becomes the name of their band and they explicitly state that it is a combination of their names... wow, very unpredictable.
The author gives us the story in three perspectives: Grace, Jared, and Angel -- Grace's guardian angel that has been assigned the name Ariel by Grace. Angel's perspective was my least favorite, and considering all three main characters were driving me crazy, that says a lot. It is also told through first person, yet once I finished the book I still felt absolutely no connection to any of the main characters or side characters. Not a single character had a personable trait and they all seemed very one-dimensional in the sense that their personalities were very surface level. I spent the entire book waiting for any of these characters to have some sort of character development, and was left with characters who were in exactly the same state as when they were first introduced.
Starting right off the bat, the story goes into detail of a school shooting and all these tragedies, and yet it was still hard to connect with the characters and their emotions as they dealt with a number of devastating life events. With the chapters being so short, we really would only get a glimpse of someone's thoughts before switching right over to a new perspective or completely different event with other characters. I would have much preferred that the book have more of a focus on the Dark ones or literally anything pertaining to fallen angels -- I felt as though they were used as a tagline to get people interested in the story, but then quickly abandoned to actually follow more of a religious story instead.
The romance felt forced and very one-sided for the majority of the book, and there was so much back and forth between Grace and Jared that I quickly became bored of their will-they-won't-they game that I was begging for the book to be over. There was absolutely no actual chemistry between the two of them, and I felt like the only reason they were being pushed together was because of circumstances beyond their control, rather than actual feelings for one another.
I did not expect this book to be so heavily influenced and incorporating Christian aspects -- maybe because I missed the little bible verse in the beginning of the book, but I had gone into the story thinking it had more of a focus on Nephilim and angels, rather than God. In fact, I entirely forgot that Jared was Nephilim because it was so rarely mentioned, despite the fact that the summary of the book seems to place emphasis on its importance to the plot. Additionally, for someone who was supposedly cursed by God, Jared sure does seem to spend a lot of time talking about how great he is and how everyone should be thanking him and praying. It definitely should have been much clearer from the summary that the themes of the book were more religion based than supernatural, because I honestly do not think I would have picked it up knowing its true theme.
Why is there so much singing??? I understand they created a band together, but my gosh they were singing nearly every other page and I thought my head was going to explode. Especially when the lyrics are written out like I'm not reading that, sorry! Every single time lyrics popped up on the page, they would last a page and half, taking up room where the author could have been developing the characters or moving the plot along. There was a ton of unnecessary music and song references as well, and I understand that they go to a school for musical talents, but it really felt like the number of references was pushing it.
The pacing was all over the place -- at some points I thought the plot was moving way too slow, and at other points I felt as though the author was introducing conflicts in one chapter and then abandoning them in the next one. Especially after finishing the book and understanding that the timeline takes places over the course of a year, everything felt way too rushed to be happening over such a long period of time. There were a few plot points that I was actually starting to get interested in, and then they would be resolved in the next ten pages or completely ignored for the rest of the book. I had absolutely no interest in any of these side characters, and their unnecessary presence during the majority of the book had me begging for it to be over.
Personally, this book was not for me and I will not be continuing on with the series. It was just all over the place regarding plot, main themes, and character development, and the summary definitely mislead me on what the story was going to entail. If you are looking for a fallen angel series, I would definitely recommend Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick instead.
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